


Married in Spirit

by Aiffe



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/M, Lolicon, Necrophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-19
Updated: 2011-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-08 01:09:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aiffe/pseuds/Aiffe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate ending to the Hell arc. What if Sesshoumaru's mother hadn't had a convenient anti-death rock?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Married in Spirit

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ravyn Skye in the comments on her LJ. Yes, I'd long since officially left the fandom, but spontaneous commentfic doesn't count. >___>

Sesshoumaru stood over the small girl on the altar. His mother had seen that he would rather be trapped in the depths of Hell forever than in the smaller, personal hell of leaving her behind. But the girl did not stir, even to draw breath.  
  
“I’m sorry,” his mother said. “I didn’t know you had already revived her.”  
  
“It would seem your lesson was unnecessary,” he said in understated bitterness.  
  
She was crying. Not wracking sobs, but a few dignified, well-placed tears. For a moment, it offended him that she should cry when his own face remained dry, as though her pain was greater, as though she had the _right_. But he knew his mother. She cried for her son that couldn’t.   
  
It wasn’t enough.  
  
“Then there isn’t another way.”  
  
“I’m afraid not. Human life is so fragile.” She paused. “I am sorry, I did not mean to cut it so short. But she would have died anyway, Sesshoumaru.”  
He did not accept this.  
  
“Kohaku,” Sesshoumaru said.  
  
“I understand,” Kohaku replied. “I loved her too. It’s all right. But I warn you, the jewel wants to be whole. You may not be able to keep her long.”  
  
“Thank you, Kohaku,” Sesshoumaru said. The boy was brave, and honorable. He’d never seen him falter, not at an eternity in Hell, or even at his own death. He reached his hand to the boy’s shoulder.  
  
His mother caught his hand. “No, Sesshoumaru. That isn’t life. If you love her, do not do this to her.”  
  
He hesitated, looking at the dead girl, thinking that any price would be worth paying to hear her voice again. But he would not be the one to pay that price. He dropped his hand, making a keening sound that didn’t seem to come from his throat, but deep in his chest—deeper, even, like the terrible grinding a glacier makes when something deep within it cracks. He touched Rin’s cold cheek.  
  
“Jaken,” he said to the small toad youkai bawling at a safe distance. “Collect yourself, we are leaving.”  
  
“Shall I carry her, Sesshoumaru-sama?” Kohaku asked.  
  
“No…I will do it.”

-  
  
Sesshoumaru gently cleaned the corpse, having cast away her dirty kimono, and prepared a clean burial robe. His hands ran over the many small cuts and scrapes her small body bore that would now never heal. It seemed he had never been an adequate protector.  
  
He grieved both for the girl he had lost and the woman he would never know. He knew what Rin had meant when she said she wanted to be with him forever. It wasn’t unusual, for young girls to love their protectors, to want to marry them. He would never have taken advantage of that. He would have made sure she was given a choice, as an adult. He would have let her see every part of him, given her every opportunity to change her mind. If she came to love him in return, it would be freely, with an adult’s judgment. But she hadn’t died like that. She had died full of childish adoration of him. She had died waiting for a kiss on her lips that never came.  
  
He pressed his lips to her cold, unresponsive ones. It seemed so terrible to him that he had never been able to give her the love she craved from him. Perhaps now he knew how she’d felt, being the one longing for any gesture from her, any sign of recognition, one word of affection, one touch, one breath, and knowing it would never come, because she was not capable of it. How cruel he had been.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and kissed her closed eyes, her forehead, her hair that still bore her scent along with the stench of death. He ran the wet cloth over every part of her body, and as if in some purifying ritual, trailed kisses after it, only stopping to whisper, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” into her unresponsive flesh.  
  
In his mind, he allowed her to grow up. In one small act of kindness to himself, the Rin in his mind only grew in love for him, never rejecting him as he bared more and more of himself to her. Casting politics and youkai interference aside, they were married in his mind, and Rin became his first wife, always first in his heart. He would never know the body of another while she lived. And they consummated their love together, the first of many unions, and Rin told him she hoped to conceive a son. He could feel the contentment coming off her warm body in waves, the fulfillment of a love she had carried since she was only a child, her adoration undiminished and her dreams satisfied after a long and worthwhile wait.  
  
Deep within her cold, undeveloped body, the storm within Sesshoumaru finally broke, and he left more tears than seed on her. Afterwards, he lay beside her, naked and as cold to the touch as she was from the night chill, still weeping slowly, like a wound draining.  
  
But she had not passed on without his love. He’d made sure of that. They had been married in spirit.


End file.
